senior presidential campaign operatives for the already declared candidates who say, look, you know we re going to go along with the rnc rules until the moment my guy needs another debate, and then who knows? everything s up in the air. so we re going to see if the rnc is actually able to keep control of this whole system through the whole primary process. there are a lot of people who are skeptical. i think it shows, there is real legitimate debate within the republican big tents right now. that debate is real. and it s ongoing. and it s even vicious and strong, and interesting i think it s for all of us who are not republicans, we should want 12 people up there. i think 30. not just for the sake of them winning or losing but also because there s some legitimate debates here that will get drowned off. last time around, they snuffed out gary johnson i think on explicitly ideological grounds. hopefully they won t do such a thing this time.
shouldn t the rnc just turn it on? here s the other thing. i don t know the rnc rules, i m not a lawyer. but it just seems to me if i were a candidate and nbc said i don t care what the rnc says, we re going to hold a debate tuesday night in columbia, i d be there. can i change topics with you, ed, to chris christie. he rallied the troops yesterday, seemingly taking some swipes at some of the other republicans, bobby jindal for some of his past comments about, rand paul as well. i want to put up on the screens one of the comments that he said. he said i think we have some folks who believe that our job is to be college professors for our ideas to matter we have to win. and if we don t govern, all we do is shout to the wind. and so i m going to do anything i need to do to win. is chris christie the guy that can expand the party, that can also keep the tea party base enthusiastic at the same time? well, it s a tough balancing test and it remains to be seen. and chris christie, be
different way to play. first of all if we have more votes and i suspect we ll revisit arizona and florida both of which are porportional and mitt romney has an overrepresentation because they are violating the rnc rules and claiming they are win or take all which they are not supposed to be. start there. and second, i think the question is how do you write the platform . what is the platform going to be. and have pieces out of the ron paul and newt gingrich and santorum. is it a romney only platform? what kind of coalition emerge. we have not seen anything like this. i think since 1920. and on the republican side. you can argue 1940 as a historian. but you may have to go 1920. it is a different environment and you have to candidate mitt
different way to play. first of all if we have more votes and i suspect we ll revisit arizona and florida both of which are porportional and mitt romney has an overrepresentation because they are violating the rnc rules and claiming they are win or take all which they are not supposed to be. start there. and second, i think the question is how do you write the platform . what is the platform going to be. and have pieces out of the ron paul and newt gingrich and santorum. is it a romney only platform? what kind of coalition emerge. we have not seen anything like this. i think since 1920. and on the republican side. you can argue 1940 as a historian. but you may have to go 1920. it is a different environment and you have to candidate mitt
probably didn t. that is a win for mitt romney. arizona, because of rnc rules, 29 delegates is 29 delegates and it s a good win for mitt romney. what does it mean at this point in the evening we haven t been able to call this michigan race? we don t know if it it is going to be romney or it is going to be santorum but what does it mean in romney s home state of michigan, byron, it is too close to call? it means it is tougher than he thought it would be. he won by 9 points back in 2008 over john mccain. there were times when he appeared to be maybe six, eight points ahead, and just in the last 48 hours, we had the sense that santorum was coming back a little bit. it s been so up and down. santorum had a poor performance in his debate in arizona a week ago. it seemed to hurt him badly. then he kept coming back after a